Boosey & Hawkes B&H eQuarternotes Composer News

2015 is the 75th anniversary year of the Tanglewood Music Center, founded by Serge Koussevitzky in 1940, which has fostered generations of musicians.

The list of commissions by Boosey & Hawkes composers at Tanglewood this summer includes new works by Oscar Bettison, Detlev Glanert, Steven Mackey, Einojuhani Rautavaara and Ned Rorem, programmed alongside repertoire classics by Copland, Britten, Bernstein and Carter.

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HK Gruber introduces his new work for percussion and orchestra, performed by Colin Currie at the BBC Proms on 20 July and Wien Modern on 15 November.

into the open… is both a processional through a percussive landscape and a tribute to publisher David Drew. The single symphonic span combines bell-like sonorities with exotic instruments from China, the Caribbean and South America.

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MacMillan premieres at festivals this summer include the unveiling of his Symphony No.4 at the BBC Proms in London conducted by Donald Runnicles. The work explores the interplay of ritual archetypes in music: movement, exhortation, petition and joy.

The Cabrillo Festival with Marin Alsop on the rostrum features the US premieres of Epiclesis with trumpeter Tine Thing Helseth and Percussion Concerto No.2 with Colin Currie. MacMillan’s powerful birth-themed cantata Quickening receives two performances at Grant Park Music Festival in Chicago.

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The archive of Serge Prokofieff has moved to the Rare Books Library of Columbia University in New York, reuniting composition sketches and scores, letters and papers, books and recordings.

The history of the composer’s personal archive, previously split between the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris and Goldsmiths College in London, is explained by Jennifer B. Lee, Curator of the Performing Arts Collections.

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Copland’s Symphony No.3, with its final movement incorporating Fanfare for the Common Man, is rightly regarded as one of the quintessential American symphonies.

The new edition of the symphony, now available for performance, corrects numerous errors that existed in the 1966 version of the score and parts, and reinstates a section from Copland’s original score as an alternative within the finale.

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New works by young composer Mark Simpson include Israfel, a concert-opener for orchestra, inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s description of the fiery angel of Koranic and Judeo-Christian scripture.

His next major premiere, commissioned by the Manchester International Festival for premiere in July, is The Immortal for baritone, choral voices and orchestra, exploring themes of death and spiritualism drawn from John Gray’s book The Immortalisation Commission.

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Following on from the centenary celebrations for Andrzej Panufnik last year, Glasgow plays host to a major BBC retrospective of the composer’s music on 21 and 22 June.

Lukasz Borowicz conducts the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in Sinfonia Rustica, Sinfonia Sacra and Symphony No.10, while Alexander Sitkovetsky and Ewa Kupiec are soloists in the violin and piano concertos.

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Latest contemporary works viewable in our free digitised library of full scores include Unsuk Chin’s Le Silence des Sirènes, HK Gruber’s into the open… and Mark Anthony Turnage’s new trumpet concerto Håkan, while classics added include Ginastera’s Cantata para América Mágica and 25 scores by Isang Yun.

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> Boosey & Hawkes US Summer Festival Preview
> Louis Andriessen’s Theatre of the World announced
> Tod Machover’s City Symphonies in Lucerne and Detroit
> Offenbach’s Fantasio returns to the operatic stage
> Brett Dean travels: trumpet concerto and chamber concerts
> Martinu 125th feature at Oregon Music Festival
> Detlev Glanert: premieres of three American Preludes

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Premiere recording of Birtwistle’s vocal scena depicting Jacob wrestling the angel, together with In Broken Images and Virelai.

Tod Machover

Machover’s newest opera, now available on Blu-ray disc, explores the seductive threat of man’s absorption into the machine to gain immortality.

Gerald Finzi

This new collection of Finzi chamber works includes the Interlude for oboe and strings plus Five Bagatelles in the new version for clarinet and string quartet.

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Oscar Bettison
String Quartet
26 July 2015
Tanglewood Festival
The New Fromm Players

Debussy-Brett Dean
Ariettes oubliées
29 July 2015
Sydney Opera House
Magdalena Kozená/
Australian World Orchestra/
Simon Rattle

James MacMillan
Symphony No.4
3 August 2015
BBC Proms, London
BBC Scottish Symphony
Orchestra/Donald Runnicles

Mark-Anthony Turnage
Dialogue
15 August 2015
Menuhin Festival Gstaad
Patricia Kopatchinskaja/
Sol Gabetta/
Gstaad Festival Orchestra/
Kristjan Järvi

Tod Machover
Re-Structures
23 August 2015
KKL, Lucerne Festival
Lucerne Festival Orchestra/
Matthias Pintscher

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